Structural and Optoelectrical Comparison Between Chemical and Electrochemical Synthesized Poly (3-Hexylthiophene)

In this paper, poly (3-hexylthiophene) was synthesized from two methods of chemical polymerization and electrochemical polymerization. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to identify the presence of functional groups in polymers. The x-ray diffraction shows more crystallinity and less overlaps between side chains for the polymer which synthesized electrochemically. The optical behavior of both polymers was compared via Uv-vis spectra indicating the π– π* transition peak at higher wavelength for the electrochemically synthesized polymer. The conductivity measurements of the polymers were calculated and reported as 3.44 S/cm and 0.001 S/cm for electrochemically and chemically synthesized polymers, respectively. This result confirmed the presence of a more crystalline part in electrochemical synthesized polymer which also was observed from X-ray data.